Improve reliability and reduce costs with Baldor mounted ball bearing and new "smart" drives

At TOTAL 2010, Baldor showed for the first time in Europe two new innovations for automation and machine builders that improve reliability and reduce costs.

Baldor believes the first introduction to be the ultimate mounted ball bearing for washdown operating environments such as food and pharmaceutical processing. Called ULTRA KLEEN, this new Dodge-brand bearing features a 100% stainless steel bearing insert plus a new sealing system and ball retainer that retain lubrication and prevent washout in wet operating environments. The new QuadGuard sealing system has a triple lip seal and a rubberised flinger.

The triple lip seal offers three points of contact to keep lubricant in and contaminants out. The rubberised flinger, the industry”s first and only patented design, is a moulded nitrile rubber component that is bonded to the flinger surface and provides an additional barrier to contaminants. A further innovation, a two-piece ball retaining cage called Maxlife, also aids reliability by creating a grease compartment around each of the rolling elements. The compartments provide constant contact between ball and grease so an oil film always exists to prevent wear, and minimise friction and heat. The new bearings complement the existing Dodge EZ Kleen range which is widely used in food industry automation.

A second innovation comes in the form of new “smart” drives that offer space- and cost-saving solutions for single-axis automation requirements, in an Ethernet-compatible form. The standalone drives are compatible with Baldor”s Mint motion programming language. This allows them to be configured to perform basic motion control requirements such as relative and absolute moves, S-ramp profiles, jog and homing movements, registration moves, and reacting to real-time trigger events. The programming facility allows standalone drives to provide solutions for common movement automation tasks such as cutting or feeding to length, indexing moves, simple pick and place motion, and adjusting machinery for new batches. The new programming capability can also improve the PLC interfacing capabilities of process automation equipment. Every drive manufacturer offers a defined process data exchange interface with PLCs, or a “drive profile” utility. The ability to program these drives means that this interface may be adapted, perhaps to simplify the communications process or to optimise drive behaviour for a specific application.